What is the farthest human-made object?

Has any astronaut ever slept on the moon?

Dr. Francesco Ginelli’s work is all about collective effects.  The idea is that when you have a system composed of many units, certain collective properties of a system may emerge unexpectedly out of rather simple individual rules.  Dr. Ginelli discusses his work in the study of collective behavior in animal groups and sheep in particular.  He discusses the techniques of his study and what that means for our world as a whole.

Is everyone's experience of color the same?

Is it possible that a technologically advanced civilization existed 100,000 years ago?

Dr. Aric Prather introduces his field of work as a clinical-health psychologist.  He stresses the fact that too much stress or not enough sleep is bad for us and we are starting to look inside the body to understand why, as well as understand who is especially vulnerable, who is resilient, and what types of interventions might be most effective.  He also introduces and expands on his latest project that studied correlation between sleep and sickness.  Dr. Prather concludes the interview by telling us a few fun facts about his work with sleep and what his work means for our future.

Dr. Christopher Bettinger introduces his field of ingestible electronics.  He expands on what these ingestible electronics are and what their purpose is in medical fields.  Dr. Bettinger then goes in further detail about his specific work in powering these devices and some of the challenges that his group is facing today.  He concludes the interview by sharing with us his vision of the future and what these technological advances mean for the world as a whole.

Dr. Adrian Parsegian discusses his field of work in biophysics.  He begins by expanding on how our world is guarded by various forces from gravitational forces of our universe to electromagnetic forces and chemical bonding and charges in all of our biological systems.  Scientists like Dr. Parsegian want to know how molecules are organized to make functional groups and further functioning objects from sugars, lipids, proteins etc.  Dr. Parsegian expands on this merger of physical and biological systems and what it means for our world and our future.  He concludes the interview by sharing with us one of his projects called “Gecko Hamaker”.

Julia Vidonish introduces her field of environmental engineering and her work in oil spill cleanup in particular.  Julia expands on oil spills and it's implications and how her team is focusing on heavier constituents that are more difficult to clean up.  She describes her group's vision to take contaminants and utilize them as a possible resource without damaging the environment.  She concludes the episode by describing potential benefits of this new technology and how it affects our world as a whole.

Evgeniy Shishkin recaps new discoveries in Science and Tech for the month of October 2015.  Topics include comets, volcanoes, water on mars, meat as carcinogen, personal hygiene and sickness.  Episode is concluded with questions of the month and the recap of this months episodes.